Navy Cloud Encounters a Storm Front
May 19, 2015
I read “Slow Progress Forces navy to Change Strategies for Cloud, Data Centers.” I have high regard for US Navy technical professionals. ONION router technology and miniature swarm drones have been based on some Navy research.
The write up troubled me. Here’s the first passage I noted this statement:
Culturally, we have to make this shift from a mistaken belief that all our data has to be near us and somewhere where I can do and hug the server, instead of someplace where I don’t know in the cloud. This is a big shift for many within the department. It’s not going to be an easy transition.”
Like most nations’ military forces resources are available in the form of personnel, machines, and money. Staffing also refreshes on a cadence different from some other government entities and many commercial organizations. There are not too many 70 year old nuclear submarine commanders.
The issue about the shift to cloud computing suggests that more than technical hurdles prevent enterprise and mission critical applications from moving to the cloud. I noted this paragraph as well:
While the Navy is open to using commercial or public clouds, the Marine Corps is going its own way. Several Marine Corps IT executives seemed signal that the organization will follow closely to what the Navy is doing, but put their own twist on the initiative. One often talked about example of this is the Marines decision to not move to the Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) that is part of the Joint Information Environment (JIE) until at least version 2 comes online in 2017. Marine Corps CIO Gen. Kevin Nally said the decision not use the initial versions of JRSS is because Marine Corps’ current security set up is better and cheaper than version 1 or 1.5.
In interpreted the milspeak to mean, “We are doing the cloud but we are focusing on a private cloud, not the public Amazon thing.”
Will enterprise search vendors who emphasize their cloud solution advise their customers about cloud options? Search marketers often tell the prospect many things, and I assume explaining the different approaches to clouds and aggregation will be part of the sales presentation.
Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2015
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